In the Orient Read online

  Dr. and Mrs. Chen could see that their young guest was genuinely enthusiastic as he recounted his reactions to all the places he’d visited earlier in the day. When Archibald began to describe the T-shirt he’d purchased at Stanley Market, Dr. Chen’s right eyebrow arched.

  “Sun Wukong, the famous Monkey King, eh,” Dr. Chen said, stroking his chin. “Well now, you probably have never heard of the Monkey King, but he’s the main character in one of my favorite Chinese novels, Journey to the West.

  “The Monkey King was born from a stone. He went on to obtain amazing powers, but he gets himself into all kinds of trouble before Buddha finally imprisons him inside a mountain. Ultimately, the Monkey King escapes from the mountain and goes on to achieve Buddhahood. My favorite part is—”

  “I think we should let Archibald finish telling us about his impressions of Hong Kong,” Mrs. Chen politely interrupted, again patting her husband’s forearm. “There will be plenty of time to discuss the Monkey King later. In fact, if my memory is correct, Journey to the West is the novel that Archibald’s Chinese Literature class will be studying this summer.”

  “Again, right you are, my dear,” Dr. Chen replied. “So, Archibald, continue on with your impressions of Hong Kong.”

  Archibald had just finished telling his host family how much he enjoyed eating octopus for the first time, when five bowls of steaming shark fin soup arrived. After the soup was consumed, deep fried prawn spring rolls, fried wanton with a sweet and sour dipping sauce, and Chinese pickled cucumbers and cabbage were placed on the rotating top in the center of the table.

  “Just turn the tabletop when you want something,” May said as she took her chopsticks and then gently lifted up a spring roll and placed it on the plate in front of her. Watching Archibald expertly use his pair of lacquered wooden chopsticks to do the same with a piece of pickled cabbage, she laughed and asked, “Where on earth did you learn to use chopsticks?”

  “Didn’t you know that all Americans use chopsticks when we eat our burgers and fries?” Archibald shot back with a huge smile on his face.

  After everyone had their fill of the steamed dim sum dishes, which included chicken wrapped in Chinese wild yam, spare ribs smothered in black bean sauce, pork dumplings with crab roe, prawn dumplings with vegetables, and char sin buns, it was time for dessert. Never in his life had Archibald seen or tasted desserts even remotely similar to the steamed layered custard cream, leaf wrapped glutinous dumplings with red bean paste, and fresh mango pudding that rotated before him on the lazy susan.

  The meal concluded with another first for Archibald—fresh lychee fruit. As he popped one of the circular white lychees into his mouth, he thanked his hosts, saying, “This was awesome! I’m going to have to get the correct spelling and description of everything we ate. Then I can write home all about it!”

  “I’m so glad you liked it,” Mrs. Chen replied, assuming “awesome” was a compliment. “However, you need to know that we don’t dine like this every night, although I must admit that Kuang Jianquo is an excellent cook.”

  Robert Liu had arranged for a taxi to be waiting outside the front door of the restaurant when the Chens and Archibald finished their meal. While May and her parents rode home with Robert, Archibald and William followed close behind in the taxi. It had been a busy first full day in Hong Kong, so it didn’t surprise William when Archibald nodded off just before the taxi arrived back at Jade Place.

  After saying good night to the Chen family, Archibald headed up the stairs to his room. For the second night in a row, he was asleep within ten minutes of closing his bedroom door.

  Classes Begin

  With the exception of a brief trip to Happy Valley to visit Marymount Secondary School, where the SLAP classes would begin the following Monday morning, Sunday was spent relaxing at Jade Place.

  During the twenty-minute car ride with William and his father to Marymount, Archibald learned that the all-girls school, originally named Holy Spirit School, opened in 1927. The school was closed during World War II, and re-opened in 1948 as Maryknoll School. The school’s name had just recently been changed to Marymount Secondary School. The Columbian Sisters ran the school, and they’d graciously made several of their classrooms available for the SLAP faculty and students for the past five years.

  After listening to William’s advice on the best way to get over jet lag, Archibald resisted the temptation to take a nap after he returned from Marymount Secondary School. In fact, he made it through dinner and all the way to nine o’clock in the evening before he retired to his bedroom and finally closed his eyes. For the third night in a row, he was sound asleep within ten minutes of closing his bedroom door.

  Archibald slept soundly through the night, opening his eyes exactly one minute before the alarm clock went off at six thirty in the morning. The routine that day would be, with few exceptions, the same one he would follow each weekday for the next seven weeks.

  After his Chinese breakfast, Archibald walked several blocks to the bus stop where the SLAP motor coach arrived at seven forty-five. He, along with the other SLAP students who were picked up along the way, arrived at Marymount Secondary School in time for their first class that began at eight thirty. After SLAP classes ended at three thirty in the afternoon, he boarded the same motor coach and was driven back to The Peak bus stop.

  From a little after four o’clock to about six o’clock in the evening, Archibald did his homework. Then he relaxed with William and May until dinner was served at half past seven. By ten o’clock, he was back in bed.

  While Archibald enjoyed all of his SLAP courses, he liked the Hong Kong History and Culture class and the Chinese Literature class the best. Excellent teachers made both classes very interesting. Mr. Goodfellow, a transplanted history teacher from the outskirts of London, taught Hong Kong History and Culture, while Mrs. Wang, a Hong Kong native, taught Chinese Literature.

  Even though Archibald knew that Hong Kong was under British rule, he hadn’t known how or when the British took control. It turned out that the opium trade sparked a conflict, referred to as the First Opium War, between Great Britain and the Qing Dynasty. Resolution of that conflict ultimately led both parties to sign the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. Under the treaty, Hong Kong Island and its harbor were ceded to Great Britain “in perpetuity”—or in other words, forever.

  Two other important treaties were later signed between the Qing Dynasty and the British Crown. The Convention of Peking, signed in 1860, resolved the Second Opium War. This treaty added part of the Kowloon Peninsula to the land that the Qing Dynasty had already ceded to Great Britain. When the British wanted to fortify their defense of Hong Kong in 1898, they signed the Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory, under which they obtained a ninety-nine year lease for the area later referred to as the “New Territories.”

  Mr. Goodfellow explained that for the past twenty years, the Chinese government had been pressuring the British government to return all of Hong Kong when the ninety-nine year lease expired in 1997. In fact, the Chinese had been successful, and the Sino-Soviet Joint Declaration had recently been signed. Under this agreement, Great Britain agreed to transfer sovereignty for all the Hong Kong territories to the People’s Republic of China on July 1, 1997.

  Just as Mrs. Chen had predicted, Journey to the West, the classic Chinese epic comedic folk novel written by Wu Cheng’en during the Ming Dynasty in the sixteenth century, was the sole topic of Archibald’s Chinese Literature class. Since the novel was comprised of one hundred chapters, the class studied both the abridged English translation of Arthur David Waley’s Monkey, published in 1942, and the supplemental texts taken from the authoritative four-volume edition written by Anthony C. Yu and published in 1977.

  Mrs. Wang originally selected Monkey because Waley had translated thirty chapters almost word for word, rather than briefly summarizing all one hundred chapters, as was the case in previous translations. In reading Monkey, Archibald learned about the origin of Sun Wu
kong, who became the legendary Monkey King, together with the most important episodes of his western journey, including what happened when Sun Wukong and other pilgrims finally reached their destination.

  The Monkey King

  The more he read, the more Archibald became fascinated with the story of the Monkey King. Not always a powerful king, Monkey was born from a stone on the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit. After joining a clan of other monkeys, it didn’t take long for his stature to rise, particularly when he found the clan a new home at the Water Curtain Cave located behind a large, beautiful waterfall.

  Soon after being honored as the clan’s leader, the Monkey King recognized that he was still mortal. Wanting to obtain immortality, he mastered the ancient art of Tao. From that point on, he became almost invincible in combat, having perfected shape-shifting and the cloud-somersault that allowed him to travel thousands of miles in a single flip. He also learned how to transform each of the hairs on his body into, among other things, clones of himself.

  When the Monkey King cheated death and defied an attempt to take his soul, wiping not only his name from the “Book of Life and Death,” but also the names of every monkey known to him, he was reported to the Jade Emperor of Heaven. That was the final straw.

  Hoping to control the troublesome monkey, the Jade Emperor invited him to Heaven. There, the Monkey King was first named the Protector of the Horses, which he thought was a very important position. Upon finding out that it was the lowest job in Heaven, the Monkey King rebelled and set all of the Cloud Horses free. The Heavenly powers tried one more time to subdue the unruly monkey by making him the guardian of the Heavenly Garden, a position that the Monkey King once again mistakenly thought was very important.

  Events spiraled out of control for the Monkey King when he learned that his name was not included on the invitation list to a royal banquet that included every important God and Goddess. Enraged at the perceived unforgivable snub, he once again rebelled against the Jade Emperor, this time by conniving his way into the banquet hall and eating the “peaches of immortality,” stealing the “pills of longevity,” and drinking the royal wine, all of which had been reserved for the banquet.

  Monkey King

  One of Archibald’s favorite passages described how the Monkey King had plucked a few hairs out of its tail after becoming tired of fighting one hundred thousand celestial warriors from the Army of Heaven. After he put the hairs in his mouth and chewed them into bits, he recited a spell and spit them out as newly created hordes of fighting clones. Those clones fought on while the clever Monkey King sat back and rested.

  However, it turned out that the Monkey King wasn’t clever enough to evade being captured and locked in a cauldron for forty-nine days. When the cauldron’s top was finally removed, the Monkey King jumped out, stronger and more vindictive than before.

  With no other choice left, the Jade Emperor appealed to Buddha, who had just arrived in Heaven from his temple in the West. It was soon after Buddha agreed to help the Jade Emperor that the Monkey King finally met his match.

  Knowing he could leap long distances in a single bound, the Monkey King smugly accepted a bet that he couldn’t escape from the palm of Buddha’s hand. The Monkey King then leaped and flew to what he thought was the outer boundaries of Heaven. Once there, he pulled a hair out of its tail and wrote, “Monkey was here” on the only visible objects, five large pillars.

  However, when the Monkey King leaped back, he found he was still in Buddha’s palm. More surprising, he found out that the five pillars were really Buddha’s five fingers!

  As the Monkey King struggled to escape, Buddha instantly closed his fist and transformed his hand into a mountain that he tightly sealed. Just as Haktu had remained a prisoner in the secret cave’s underground lake, so too did the Monkey King stay locked in a desolate Chinese mountain for five painful centuries.

  The Monkey King ultimately gained his freedom when he agreed to serve as a pilgrim under the guidance of Xuanzang, a monk of the Tang Dynasty. Knowing that the Monkey King would be impossible to control, Xuanzang received a gift from Buddha—a magical headband. There was a catch, however. Once the headband was put on, it could not be removed.

  When the Monkey King was tricked into donning the headband, Xuanzang let out a special chant that immediately tightened it, causing excruciating pain. From that moment on, and throughout their ensuing westward journey to retrieve the early discourses of Buddha, or sutras as they were called, the Monkey King was under Xuanzang’s complete control.

  Pigsy and Sandy, two others who needed to atone for past crimes, joined Xuanzang and the Monkey King in their epic journey to India. During the journey, Xuanzang’s horse turned out to be a dragon prince, and the group of five battled a series of attacks from demons and other supernatural creatures.

  More than once during the dangerous journey, the Monkey King acted as Xuanzang’s bodyguard, saving the monk’s life. Ultimately, that loyal service was rewarded when the Monkey King was granted Buddhahood and immortality.

  Classes Finally Conclude

  The seven weeks flew by quickly. Not surprisingly, Archibald had mixed feelings as he walked out of his final SLAP class on a hot and humid Friday afternoon. While he was excited to see his brother, who was flying into Hong Kong that evening, he was sorry to be saying good-bye to his teachers and new friends.

  Even though Archibald never felt homesick at any point during his stay in Hong Kong, he had greatly appreciated receiving the weekly letters from his parents, Jockabeb, Tess, and especially Willow. It had been eight months since he’d kissed Willow good-bye outside the Langley, Virginia debriefing room, and he was definitely missing her. Worse yet, he wasn’t at all sure when he would get a chance to see her again.

  Before leaving for London with his son, Dr. Chen had arranged for Robert Liu to drive Archibald and May to the airport to meet Jockabeb. Despite the heavy traffic, they arrived half an hour before Jockabeb’s plane was scheduled to arrive, which was a good thing because it landed twenty minutes early.

  Standing in the baggage claim area with May and Robert Liu, Archibald could hardly contain his excitement as he waited for the first glimpse of his brother. He could not wait to recount what he’d already done in Hong Kong, and to get on with what promised to be a fun week before returning home.

  However, he was in no way prepared for what he saw when his brother finally cleared passport control and came into view. There, walking right next to Jockabeb, was the one person Archibald had least expected to see, and the one he had most wanted to be with—Willow!

  Breaking into a sprint, Willow ran toward Archibald, not caring what anyone else in the airport thought. The moment she reached him, she threw her arms around his neck, and breathlessly whispered in his ear, “Surprise!”

  After a quick kiss, Archibald leaned back and said, “I can’t believe it. How in the world did you—”

  “It’s a long story that I’ll tell you later,” Willow said, gently placing a finger on his lips. Then, looking at May, she added, “You should say hello to your brother and the introduce me to your pretty friend.”

  Throwing a bear hug around Jockabeb, Archibald laughed and said, “Welcome to Hong Kong, little brother. How’s your jet lag?”

  “I think I’m running on adrenaline at the moment, but I’m sure I’ll crash soon,” Jockabeb answered.

  Willow

  Turning to May, Archibald said, “Willow, Jockabeb, this is May Chen. May, this is my brother and my . . . ah, ummm . . .”

  “Girlfriend,” Jockabeb blurted out, rescuing his brother.

  “Yeah, my girlfriend . . . my girlfriend,” Archibald repeated, showing a faint blush as he did.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, and welcome to Hong Kong,” May replied, looking intently at Jockabeb. Surprised that he looked nothing like his older brother, she thought the sandy-haired, fifteen-year-old boy was definitely cute.

  “Nice to meet you,” Willow answered.

  �
�Yeah, likewise for me, too,” Jockabeb added awkwardly, clearly taken aback by May’s exotic good looks.

  “And this is Robert Liu, Dr. Chen’s driver,” Archibald said, extending a hand in Robert’s direction. “He’ll drive us to Jade Place after we get your luggage.”

  On the way to Jade Place, Willow explained that it had been Jockabeb’s idea for her to come to Hong Kong. After Willow received a letter from Jockabeb asking if she could come to Hong Kong with him, Baron Franz Gustav von Koromia, Willow’s legal guardian, had contacted the boys’ parents to see if they approved of her trip. Once they said yes, a call was placed to Dr. and Mrs. Chen to see if the Chen family would mind another houseguest. The moment the Chens said they’d be honored to have Willow visit, travel arrangements had been made.

  Willow went on to explain that after Meatloaf had died in the Arctic, Koro, knowing that Meatloaf had purchased a large life insurance policy, had notified the insurance company of Meatloaf’s death. Several weeks later, he received a letter from the insurance company saying that it was prepared to make full payment on the policy.

  According to Koro, he was the only one who knew that Meatloaf had put most of his share of the earnings from the Moonlight Clan’s blanket making business into the life insurance policy. Even more surprisingly, Willow was named as the policy’s sole beneficiary.

  Since Koro believed that travel to the Far East would be a fitting conclusion to Willow’s home schooling curriculum, he was only too happy to advance her the funds to cover the cost of her trip. In fact, he’d even taken her shopping in Manhattan to make sure she’d have the proper clothes to wear in Hong Kong.